Agriculture Secretary Francisco Laurel Jr. has overhauled the process by which rice stocks are fortified to ensure uninterrupted supply, saying henceforth rice importers post a mandatory bond equal to 10 percent of any shipment.
This developed Tuesday at Laurel’s confirmation hearing where he told the Commission on Appointments that some 1 million metric tons worth of rice imports have been issued permits but that these simply lie idle and unused.
According to Laurel, those import permits are even now being audited and that some of the rice traders have voluntarily turned them over to the government.
DA to implement bonds for rice import applications; PH to likely to need only 200k MT of sugar imports next year
The Department of Agriculture (DA) said that a bond worth 10 percent the value of applied rice imports will now be implemented before the issuance of permits to assure that applications will be fulfilled by traders.
DA Secretary Francisco Laurel Jr., said during his confirmation hearing conducted by the Commission on Appointments yesterday, the move is being made after the agency recently found out there were around 1 million metric tons (MT) of issued permits for rice imports that are not being immediately utilized.
Laurel said holders of rice import permits that are not immediately shipping supplies were asked to voluntarily surrender their documents.
To remedy the situation, the DA has put in place a new system and imposed new conditions to the issuance of rice import permits. Where before the rice importer merely has to pay P350 for the all-important import permit, the same rice importer henceforth must post a bond equal to 10 percent of any proposed shipment.
On top of the mandatory import bond, the similarly mandatory ship-out date has been cut in half to only 30 days instead of the usual 60-day window to speed up the import process even more, Laureal said.
“We have put in place new systems and conditions for import permits,” he confidently told the legislators of the meaning of DA memorandum circular 53-2023 dated 4 December this year.Laurel also bared more rice shipments from India made possible in large part by the intervention of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. but withheld the volume of the transaction to prevent the unscrupulous from using the information to manipulate rice prices while the commodity is in transit.
“I have to protect the people from speculators. What I can say is we are covered until the end of January or early February,” Laurel said.
Data from the Bureau of Plant Industry’s National Plant Quarantine Services Division show as much as 2.94 million metric tons of rice have been shipped to the Philippines as of 6 November this year, of which 89 percent or 2.62 million metric tons were shipped from Vietnam.
In a parallel development, Laurel intimated the Sugar Regulatory Board finds no urgency in importing sugar from overseas suppliers, based on current estimates.
“We feel that next year, we won’t need to import too much sugar. This year, the country already imported much and there are still enough stocks in the market,” Laurel said.
The government view and that of industry is that “we may only need to import 200,000 metric tons, assuming no adverse weather conditions” happening, Laurel said.
